Clean-up Day

Photo: I started a “solidarity” email chain with some of the other moms from preschool asking for their “best practices” for these snowed-in situations. Suggestion number one? Build a fort! Did that in the playroom yesterday with some chairs… didn’t last long. This morning? I just put some old sheets over the dining room table and boom. Just as good! It’s days like this when I’m like, “this house isn’t big enough for the four of us.” But then I realize, first, people have raised more children in smaller spaces. And, second, even if I had a compound sized house, being cooped up for this many days would make anything feel small!

What do you do after getting the greatest amount of snow you’ve ever seen?

Clean it up, of course!

So The Husband and I rolled out of bed, had some breakfast and then got to work. Him outside, me inside. It took him 3 hours this morning to go for another round of clean-up with the snow-blower today. The path from the house to the car, and the path from the car to the street is, thankfully, clear. Then, because my husband is a good man, he dug out our elderly neighbor’s car and walk, too. Such a good boy scout, that husband of mine.

And I am on my fifth load of laundry (sheets were done and so were towels, plus the regular obligatory loads of clothing). And a bathroom needed to get scrubbed… and for some reason that I will never understand, snow days mean crumbs all over the house. Just… just crumbs, everywhere! And stickiness! Gross! Needless to say, I need to purchase some shares in whatever company owns Mr. Clean. Clearly I used a whole bottle of that stuff today…

So, we’re both now sitting here feeling mighty sore. Little boys, who refuse to go outside to play in the snow, are currently in their room not napping… so I don’t know how much reprieve I’m going to get today. It’s not to say that they didn’t have a busy morning! My first order of business was to build a “fort” for them in the dining room (read: drape the dining room table with old sheets, put some pillows under it and put two flashlights in there). This provided a few hours of fun, actually. I was very pleased with the results. Ursa Minor had to ruin it by going to the playroom and throwing the flashlight around like a ball when I wasn’t looking (Reminder: the playroom has some 10 windows in it), so now the flashlights are put away. Can’t have nice things, ya’ll… can’t have nice things.

One fun highlight of the day came during the middle of cleaning. The boys really love Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, which we usually listen to in the car. I love that song as much as the next girl, but we’ve been listening to it for a good 2 months now and I’m ready to move on. I let them listen to it once today and then called up an old-school funk playlist on Google Music. The boys were were… less than enthused. I told them if they like the new stuff, they’ve gotta appreciate the old stuff. This went… over their heads. Ursa Minor, though, did have fun dancing to a little bit of Prince in the middle of the playlist. That child is my child. Ursa Major was like, “can we listen to something else?” I told him that little boys who don’t like Prince get time outs forever. This… made him stomp to the playroom in anger.

I’m a terrible mother.

But it was kinda funny.

All of us are going to have to leave this house tomorrow. The Husband has to go back to work and I’m going to have to get these kids somewhere. There are a few “indoor parks” around here that I have been avoiding like the plague because, frankly, I think they are hotbeds for the plague. Everyone brings their kids to those places with runny noses or stomach bugs and then the next thing you know, the entire house is sick! I’ll try to see if I can just get them to play in the yard… but the snow is just about as tall as they are, so I don’t think they are going to go for it. We’ll see…

The boys aren’t napping, so I am going to cut this post short and sneak a few mommy-tasks in before releasing them back into the house. Not awesome. 🙁 This is what happens when they aren’t out and about to spend all of this energy. Might be worth the risk of the plague just to get them out and climbing on something… they’ve already had the flu this season, so what could they bring home?

…plenty of things… I am going to have to think about that…

Anyway, we’re warm, we’re safe, we still have power. I’m slowly losing my sanity because I’m snowed in with young children, but there are worse things in the world. My Quiet Thoughts might be screaming on Friday depending on how the rest of the week goes… but for now, we’re ok. 🙂

I am not a snob about music. AT ALL. I likes what I likes and I don’t generally apologize (or share, frankly. The default when other people are in my car is NPR or Jazz), but I feel like Prince is just a given. It’s just… it’s just not negotiable…

I don’t know if you have Instagram, but if you’re interested in following me (Candice May) I post lots of pictures of the kids doing homeschool activities. It might give you a few ideas for housebound fun:)

You know, I’m not on instagram! Only because I can barely keep up with the junk I’ve got: the FB, this blog, the twitters, I even have a Tumblr I don’t really use… I feel like it’s just enough and Instagram just complicates things. Can you lurk on Instagram without posting/making an account? Probably not, right?

I hear you! I also have tumblr but haven’t really gotten the hang of it. I set it so that my blog posts get posted up there aswell, but that’s about it. I’m not sure if you can look at Instagram without an actual account, but I do know lots of people that have it and just don’t post their own photo’s. Also, if you’re interested, you can set up Instagram to share the same photo’s on your Facebook, tumblr, and Twitter. If you want. It’s not for everyone though. I personally just like not having to actually upload photo’s to Facebook very often;)